The American patriarch of the Babbitt family was Edward Bobet, who arrived in Plymouth Colony in 1639 at the age of twelve. He settled, probably with stepparents, in what became Taunton, Massachusetts. His descendants migrated into the frontiers of western Massachusetts and New York and, seven generations later, to Cincinnati, Ohio. David William Babbitt moved to Cincinnati in either 1848 or 1849. He married Catherine Spellmire in 1852 and they had one daughter and five sons. The five Babbitt brothers joined the great westward migration of the 1880s. In 1886 two of brothers started a cattle business in Flagstaff in Arizona Territory. The remaining brothers followed, and, although one later returned to Cincinnati, the family went on to create an economic empire in Arizona. One famous descendant, Bruce Babbitt, became the governor of Arizona in 1978 and was later appointed United States Secretary of the Interior.